Hello everyone,
I recently received my 1st Warning email from Niantic stating that my account was flagged for “harassment or abuse” in my Wayfarer contributions.
I am quite confused and worried because I take my submissions seriously and I am certain I have not used any offensive language, mentioned any player names, or tried to threaten/harass anyone in my titles, descriptions, or supporting information.
I suspect this might be a misunderstanding by the automated system or reviewers misinterpreting my supporting text. I want to follow the rules strictly and ensure this doesn’t happen again.
Could a Niantic Team member or an experienced reviewer please help me understand which specific nomination or edit triggered this warning? I would highly appreciate the guidance so I can correct my mistakes for future reviews and submissions.
Thank you for your time and help!
Mod note: friend code redacted
Welcome to the forum!
The warning email you should have received separately should have mentioned a specific nomination if this is related to Wayfarer. In order for us to advise you about it, please provide:
- A screenshot of your nomination, including rejection reasons if it has already been rejected
- Include the title, description, both photos, and supplemental information
- Copy and paste the title, description and supplemental so others can translate them
- If you feel comfortable please share the location, as it is helpful (i.e. hidden duplicates), but you can mask it if you wish.
Those are the prompts you see if you originally post in Nomination Support It could also help for you to show us a screenshot of the email about the warning, but don’t include personal information.
Often staff members will see a post like this and initiate a DM.
That string is just the way the abuse flag shows up. It is more often for pinning a nomination away from where the point of interest actually exists or for using a third party photo.
The email specifically tells you that your punishment is for misplacing the pin. There is a link to appeal in that email. You can provide them with evidence that you did not misplace the pin. You can take location tagged photos, or you can submit a video that includes other reference points for them to understand that your pin was correct.
If you still have the email from submitting this nomination, you can get the gps coordinates of the pin from that. They will be below the last photo. This could help you see what you need to prove.
Pin is mislocated i noticed that but its minor differences which i thought is negligible.
It looks like from your screenshot that you have pinned about here (29.67912933777478, 76.9896026353018)
which puts this in an empty L17 S2 cell. Pinning for cell advantage is abuse Niantic takes seriously.
I can’t tell anything about what is or is not here from satellite view, so there is no need to try to convince me where it exists. I am bad with maps.
Actual staff members will have user names here that begin with “Niantic”.
There is no streetview and it isn’t possible to match anything using the ‘satellite’ images on Google maps.
The strong likelihood is that this was misplaced by a significant distance in order to put it into an empty cell.
If the real location is in the same cell, then it would help you to provide evidence of this. For example, evidence on a map of its location, or a video showing where it is which can be tied back to something which is visible on google maps (possibly sewak sabha mandir सेवक सभा मंदिर, if this is correctly pinned).
You need to prove that you didnt missplace wayspot in order to create wayspot. Next ladder will be 30days suspension(including pogo account). I suggest you recall all pending submission that might have trouble
The problem is “negligible” means different things to different people.
There is no definition of “negligible” in Wayfarer. All nominations should be pinned accurately.
We all know accidents happen but the real problem arises when a nomination is positioned in an empty cell when the real location is in an occupied cell (which means it would not appear as a stop or gym).
If you could post the accurate location of the POI then we can confirm whether that is the case. Your options then is…
- show evidence that it was an honest mistake (difficult to do).
- make sure any current nominations are accurate or removed and any future nominations are accurate.
Good luck.
Niantic not confirming cells but using cells to escalate a misplaced location is peak comedy imho.
Not really. If someone deliberately abuses the cells to misplace something, Niantic can’t ignore that just because they don’t acknowledge the use of S2 cells.
If someone is entirely new to wayfarer, or has never interacted with the Forum they have 0 knowledge of cells being a thing. How should it be possible to abuse a system you have no knowledge about…
Also, it should be noted that misplacing a spot or two can just happen, if you submit enough spots… Like it should always be regarded in how many spots were submitted overall and how many were submitted recently. If you submit 100 spots in a few months, and 99 of them are in pretty much the exact spot they should be, thats entirely diffrent to “submitted 3 spots and 2 of them were nowhere near the right spot”…
You can find out about the S2 cells without coming near this forum. There are discussions on reddit etc about how to abuse the cell system.
It isn’t possible to deliberately abuse the cells if you don’t know about them, but generally when someone puts a wayspot in an empty cell and its real location is an occupied cell, this is indicative of deliberate abuse.
It doesn’t matter if you submitted 10 or 1000 wayspots - if you deliberately mislocate something to gain a benefit in PoGo, that’s abuse.
My point being that thats still leaving the wayfarer website and interacting with the community.
Also, my point was that mislocating very few spots indicates that it’s likely a genuine mistake.
And “from a full cell to an empty cell” can be less than 1m. Keep in mind, only reviewers can use the “Street View for a more accurate placement” fearture…
Should the spot be corrected? Obviously. Should the account be flagged as someone that abuses the system to gain an advantage? I would sincerely say no. Pinning down a spot on Satellite view is hard. Especially with stuff that isn’t even visible for one of several reasons (angle, recency, obstruction…)
Niantic are not using the Cells to escalate.
They are using the fact that the nomination was misplaced in such a way that it was likely to “game the system”.
It doesn’t have to be a different cell. Example: You nominate a play park thats at the other end of a cell but you place at the end near your house so you can have a “couch stop”. This could also be deemed abuse.
The offence is not putting it in the wrong cell but misplacing it. It will usually be reviewers that have used the cells and reported it as Abuse.